A huge asteroid is about to buzz Earth

January 26, 2015 4:45 PM

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Try not to let it worry you, but a 550 meter wide chunk of space rock is going to hurtle past Earth at more than 33,000 mph very soon, another near-miss asteroid a celestially-slight 745,000 miles from our planet. While it may not sound all that close - the moon is on average 239k miles from us - asteroid 2004 BL86 is enough to have astronomers from NASA and other space agencies tracking its location closely, given the potential for destruction (or even species-level catastrophe like the "colossal bad luck" that saw the dinosaurs wiped out) the impact of such a rock would have.

It's not an idle worry, though NASA and other space agencies are clear that we needn't worry about 2004 BL86 wiping us out. The latest trajectory charts show that the tumbling rock will pass by us without incident.